With the popularity of MP3 type music players and smart mobile phones, talk radio programming for both terrestrial and Internet radio is expected to grow as an alternative to current levels of music content and associated royalties. Specifically, with Internet radio, small listener audience talk radio is beginning to emerge, allowing low-cost entry of hosted talk radio shows into the market that have a long tail of small audience programming.
Software applications are available today for use by Internet radio hosts that control core streaming capabilities of the Internet radio station and optimize music playback. Such conventional applications are sufficient to enable a host to manage the music program or station, but are inadequate for the host of an Internet talk radio program. Rather than merely managing a playlist of music, the host of an Internet talk radio program must manually perform many tasks in parallel. An example of critical tasks the host must perform may include managing a queue of callers, and at the same time, determining what topics to discuss during the talk radio program. Each task may include subtasks. For example, managing the caller queue may involve everything from screening calls to determining which calls to take next, to knowing when to end or extend a call. For terrestrial talk radio hosts, there is typically a staff of people helping to manage these activities. However, for the “long tail” type of Internet talk radio programs described here, the host is typically on his or her own—consequently, there is a need to optimize as much as these functions as possible.